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In mid-May, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra will inaugurate a series of concerts which will be held on spring and summer weekends (May 17 – September 22, 2019) in the Concert Pavilion at Grochowska Street.

From May to September, more than seventy events will be held at 272 Grochowska Street. Most of them will take place, like last year, in the Concert Pavilion for over 400 people. Besides the usual afternoon concerts, there will be the 19th Franciszek Wybrańczyk Festival "Sinfonia Varsovia to its City", "Sinfonia Varsovia at Grochowska Street" concert seies, Museum Night, Dance Evenings, and special events dedicated to children: Children's Day with many musical attractions, "Smykofonie at Grochowska Street" concert series, as well as newly inaugurated "Mornings for Entire Families".

During four symphonic concerts from the cycle "Sinfonia Varsovia at Grochowska Street", which will be held between May 17 and September 6 (7:30 p.m.), the orchestra's musicians along with recognized soloists will present a vast repertoire – from operatic arias, through the works of Polish composers, to Russian or American music. The first concert of the series will be an opportunity to listen to the most beautiful arias from the operas of Stanisław Moniuszko, Piotr Czajkowski and Giacomo Puccini. In addition to vocal works, the programme will feature instrumental pieces performed by the orchestra under the baton of Gaetano d'Espinosa.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information about the concerts at: www.sinfoniavarsovia.org 

The upcoming edition of the Musica Electronica Nova festival, which will take place on May 17-25, 2019, is entitled ‘Signs’.

As the festival's artistic director Pierre Jodlowski put it: "Because humanity has organized itself into societies, signs occupy a very important place in our lives: from prehistoric images to the banners of the Middle Ages, from signs spreading in the streets to the abundance of digital signals. What do these signs say about ourselves? What role do they play in the space of music, whose language has been based on specific signs and notations? What are the trajectories that contemporary composers indicate to us? Where do they want to lead us?".

This theme will be emphasized at the opening of the festival with a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. A Space Odyssey accompanied by live music performed by the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and the NFM Choir. This inauguration will also define Musica Electronica Nova as an interdisciplinary festival, in which genres and aesthetics intersect. This year, the programme will include premieres of works by Polish composers commissioned by the festival, including are there hidden figures? for string quartet, electronics and video by Monika Szpyrka. The "Reverse Simultaneous" concert will feature premieres of compositions by the composers of the Wroclaw Branch of the Polish Composers' Union, as well as collective compositions with violin part written by Anna Zielińska. The Akusma Forum will present the profiles of young composers from Italy, Poland and Mexico, and a special session dedicated to Elżbieta Sikora, the former artistic director of the festival. The Mini Akusma Forum electroacoustic sessions have been specially designed for our young audience – they will be a great opportunity to discover new sounds and new signs with your family!

Musica Electronica Nova is not only concerts. It also includes short meetings with composers, during which there will be an opportunity to talk about their daily work, and accompanying events prepared specially for this edition of the festival.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

Full programme available at: https://www.nfm.wroclaw.pl/musica-electronica-nova-2019 

On May 16, 2019 at 7.00 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, the 20th-century Turkish music will be performed by invited artists from Turkey and the Jerzy Semkow Polish Orchestra Sinfonia Iuventus. The concert under the patronage of the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Poland is part of the celebrations of the Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey.

A prominent figure on the Turkish musical scene was Cemal Reşit Rey, regarded as a pioneer of a movement which brought into Turkey artistic music influenced by Western trends in the wake of the country’s ‘Westernisation’ under the rule of Kemal Atatürk. In his rich oeuvre, he gave a special place to stage works – operas and operettas, which enjoy immense popularity. One of the prominent pieces of orchestral music is his symphonic rhapsody entitled Türkiye (Turkey), in ten colourful images contrasted by tempo and nature, and influenced by motifs from Turkey’s native music – the three selected episodes will be performed during the concert.

Together with four other composers, Rey co-founded an informal group known as the ‘Turkish Five’. His peer Hasan Ferit Alnar, other member of the group, was particularly fascinated by the possibilities of stylisation and harmonisation of traditional music and the use of native instruments. One of the results of this fascination was his concerto for a Turkish zither – kanun, still very popular nowadays. Of more universal nature is Alnar’s Cello Concerto, a melodious and expressive piece which includes themes with scales and rhythms typical for the Orient. During the concert on 16 May, the concerto will see its first performance outside Turkey.

The solo part will be performed by a Turkish cellist Can Kehri, a summa cum laude graduate of Professor Reşit Erzin’s cello class at the Istanbul Conservatory, and Professor Tomasz Strahl’s student at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music. As a soloist and chamber musician, he is also a member of the cello section of the Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra. The concert will be conducted by Can Okan, a recognised young-generation Turkish conductor and pianist.

Free admission with ticket resarvation! (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information at: https://sinfoniaiuventus.pl/ 

On May 15, 2019 at 3.30 p.m., the Institute of Musicology at the University of Warsaw will host a panel discussion "Nadia Boulanger and Polish 20th-Century Composers. Between European Tradition, Artistic Discipline and the Play of Imagination" as part of the 33rd Warsaw Music Encounters Festival.

The subject of the panel discussion accompanying this year's festival will be Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), the most prominent composition teacher in the 20th century, the master of many famous contemporary musicians. Professor at L'École Normale de Musique in Paris and the Conservatoire américain de Fontainebleau took special care of students from three areas: the USA, the Far East and Poland.

Among her Polish students were Zbigniew Bargielski, Jerzy Bauer, Marian Borkowski, Joanna Bruzdowicz, Zygmunt Krauze, Krzysztof Meyer, Piotr Moss, Zygmunt Mycielski, Piotr Perkowski, Marta Ptaszyńska, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Tadeusz Szeligowski, Romuald Twardowski, Antoni Wit, Stanisław Wiechowicz, and Bolesław Woytowicz. Polish artists, captivated by Karol Szymanowski's idea of ​​opening our music to the West, traveled to Paris since the end of the 1920s to be introduced by the Professor to the entire Latin musical tradition.

On the 40th anniversary of the death of the Professor, the organisers want to bend over the phenomenon of Nadia Boulanger's "school" in the group of eminent Polish students of the Mademoiselle and researchers of 20th-century Polish music. The panel will be attended by: prof. Jerzy Bauer, prof. Marian Borkowski, Małgorzata Gąsiorowska, Michal Klubiński, prof. Zygmunt Krauze, prof. Marta Ptaszyńska, dr Radosław Romaniuk and prof. Antoni Wit.

Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.

More information about the Festival at: https://www.wsm.art.pl/index.php/pl/